“Despite promising before the election not to cut money for health, the Coalition will dramatically shrink the Commonwealth’s share of hospital funding, cutting its annual contribution by $15billion by 2024, with the deepest cuts beginning in 2017.”

There is currently a proposal to sell the best real estate on the RNS Hospital campus #helpsaveRNSH to provide the capital to fund its redevelopment. A short term plan with complete disregard for the long term health care needs of the community, both within Mr Abbots electorate and throughout the state. The Greiner government sold a similar parcel of land in the 1990’s when Peter Collins was the Health Minister. The sale generated funds that would have run the hospital for only a few months. It would have been the perfect site for the current hospital redevelopment — immediately adjacent to St Leonards station. The current generation of politicians will have incrementally sold off a major teaching hospital campus, to pay the bills. The campus is the result of over 100 years of community effort to create and institution that would provide for our health in the future (2), these efforts have been completely disregarded.

The State government blames the federal governments budgetary cuts, the federal government maintains it is a state responsibility. We have a political system that has failed to serve its community …